Archive for the ‘existential risks’ category: Page 28
Oct 15, 2017
Wiping Off all Life From Earth is Not Easy
Posted by Yugal Agrawal in category: existential risks
Oct 3, 2017
Some Future 015
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: climatology, existential risks, sustainability, transhumanism
New SomeFuture podcast out. My 45-min interview starts at 55 min and is on #transhumanism:
Introduction: (0:11–1:29)
Sep 30, 2017
Why Futurist Ray Kurzweil Isn’t Worried About Technology Stealing Your Job
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: Elon Musk, engineering, existential risks, Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI, singularity
Innovation will do more good than harm, he says.
You know a topic is trending when the likes of Tesla’s Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg publicly bicker about its potential risks and rewards. In this case, Musk says he fears artificial intelligence will lead to World War III because nations will compete for A.I. superiority. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has called such doomsday scenarios “irresponsible” and says he is optimistic about A.I.
But another tech visionary sees the future as more nuanced. Ray Kurzweil, an author and director of engineering at Google, thinks, in the long run, that A.I. will do far more good than harm. Despite some potential downsides, he welcomes the day that computers surpass human intelligence—a tipping point otherwise known as “the singularity.” That’s partly why, in 2008, he cofounded the aptly named Singularity University, an institute that focuses on world-changing technologies. We caught up with the longtime futurist to get his take on the A.I. debate and, well, to ask what the future holds for us all.
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Sep 21, 2017
‘I was just doing my job’: Soviet officer who averted nuclear war dies at age 77
Posted by Derick Lee in category: existential risks
A Soviet officer who prevented a nuclear crisis between the US and the USSR and possible World War III in the 1980s has quietly passed away. He was 77. In 2010 RT spoke to Stanislav Petrov, who never considered himself a hero. We look at the life of the man who saved the world.
A decision that Soviet lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov once took went down in history as one that stopped the Cold War from turning into nuclear Armageddon, largely thanks to Karl Schumacher, a political activist from Germany who helped the news of his heroism first reach a western audience nearly two decades ago.
Sep 18, 2017
No, We Cannot Shoot Down North Korea’s Missiles
Posted by John Gallagher in category: existential risks
It’s time national leaders speak realistically about missile defense.
The number one reason we don’t shoot down North Korea’s missiles is that we cannot.
Officials like to reassure their publics about our defense to these missiles. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told his nation after last week’s test, “We didn’t intercept it because no damage to Japanese territory was expected.”
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Sep 16, 2017
‘How do we survive?’: fearful Californians prepare for nuclear attack
Posted by John Gallagher in category: existential risks
Sep 14, 2017
We will sink Japan and turn US to ‘ashes and darkness’, says North Korea
Posted by John Gallagher in category: existential risks
Sep 7, 2017
Should We be Cautious about Envisioning Dystopias?
Posted by Johnny Boston in categories: entertainment, ethics, existential risks, futurism, human trajectories, media & arts, philosophy, transhumanism
How will our relationship to technology evolve in the future? Will we regard it as something apart from ourselves, part of ourselves, or as a new area of evolution? In this new video from the Galactic Public Archives, Futurist Gray Scott explains that we are a part of a technological cosmos. Do you agree with Scott that technology is built into the universe, waiting to be discovered?
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Aug 9, 2017
How to avoid nuclear war with North Korea
Posted by Mark Larkento in categories: economics, existential risks, military
IT IS odd that North Korea causes so much trouble. It is not exactly a superpower. Its economy is only a fiftieth as big as that of its democratic capitalist cousin, South Korea. Americans spend twice its total GDP on their pets. Yet Kim Jong Un’s backward little dictatorship has grabbed the attention of the whole world, and even of America’s president, with its nuclear brinkmanship. On July 28th it tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit Los Angeles. Before long, it will be able to mount nuclear warheads on such missiles, as it already can on missiles aimed at South Korea and Japan. In charge of this terrifying arsenal is a man who was brought up as a demigod and cares nothing for human life—witness the innocents beaten to death with hammers in his gigantic gulag. Last week his foreign ministry vowed that if the regime’s “supreme dignity” is threatened, it will “pre-emptively annihilate” the countries that threaten it, with all means “including the nuclear ones”. Only a fool could fail to be alarmed.
What another Korean war might look like
Yet the most serious danger is not that one side will suddenly try to devastate the other. It is that both sides will miscalculate, and that a spiral of escalation will lead to a catastrophe that no one wants. Our briefing this week lays out, step by step, one way that America and North Korea might blunder into a nuclear war (see article). It also lists some of the likely consequences. These include: for North Korea, the destruction of its regime and the death of hundreds of thousands of people. For South Korea, the destruction of Seoul, a city of 10m within easy range of 1,000 of the North’s conventional artillery pieces. For America, the possibility of a nuclear attack on one of its garrisons in East Asia, or even on an American city. And don’t forget the danger of an armed confrontation between America and China, the North’s neighbour and grudging ally. It seems distasteful to mention the economic effects of another Korean war, but they would of course be awful, too.
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